Popstar To Opera Star: Meat Loaf ‘I’m looking for someone like me!’

Rock star Meat Loaf has revealed what he is looking for in the Popstar to Opera Star contestants. The ITV show will coach pop singers in the art of Opera and The Bat Out Of Hell singer will act as a critic for them each Friday night.

On how he wants the singers to perform Meat (can we shorten it to that?) said:

“I’ll be looking for someone just like me. What I mean is, I’ll be looking for is a performer who gets up on stage and says, ‘yes, I’m going to own this song’.

“I once performed a George Gershwin song in a very traditional way for an album George Martin was putting together, and it became my own. Don’t give me a hip-hop version of an aria. Just walk on there and make it your own. If you don’t, it’s not worth a dime.”

The Grammy Award-winning Meat Loaf knows all there is to know about “owning” a song. His opera-inspired 1977 album, ‘Bat Out of Hell’, has shifted in excess of 40 million units. It remained in the charts for a staggering nine years. And more than three decades after it was first released, an astonishing 200,000 copies are still sold every year.

Meat Loaf, who hails from Dallas, Texas but now lives in California, says he will be a frank and fearless critic of the contestants’ efforts on Popstar to Operastar. “If someone gets up there and obviously doesn’t take it seriously, I’ll be pretty opinionated about it.

“If they’re just doing it to be on TV, then I’ll nail them for it. And if they’re lazy and won’t rehearse, I’ll tell them, ‘you shouldn’t be here anymore because you clearly don’t care’. They better come out all guns blazing!